A radio advert will appeal to the lapsed faithful to 'stop, turn around, walk back' to church on Sunday. The spoken message, voiced by a series of actors, is described by the Church as 'a rap-style poem'. The ad is the latest in a 15-year campaign by the C of E to use advertising to boost church attendances and attract the attention of those, in particular the young, who have no interest in Christianity. Past efforts have met with mixed success. One mid-1990s slogan that declared Christmas to be a 'bad hair day' won universal mockery.

The new advert, produced by a Christian agency based in Bradford, aims to assure its young target audience that they do not need to dress up to go to church. In defiance of the idea of Sunday best, the 40-second routine, which is not set to a drum beat, suggests that congregations where people make an effort to look smart could lack sincerity. The grammar also does little credit to the C of E's efforts in the thousands of secondary and primary schools it helps run. It says:

'Don't look to make no airs and graces.
Faked up smiles and masked up faces.
No need to make no innovation.
Please accept this as your invitation.'

THE POEM WON ENDORSEMENT FROM LAMBETH PALACE, where the Archbishop of Canterbury's adviser on church growth, Canon Paul Bayes, said it was 'a great opportunity for churches to speak to their communities with the message of invitation.'

Unlike the multiple conspiracy theories about Jews circulating among radical fringe organizations online, THIS ONE SEEMS TO BE GAINING MOMENTUM ON MAINSTREAM ARAB AND MUSLIM WEB SITES. According to the story, first reported by Algeria's Al-Khabar daily, bands of Moroccans and Algerians have allegedly been roaming the streets of Algeria's cities kidnapping young children, who are then transported across the border into Morocco. From the Moroccan city of Oujda, the children are then purportedly sold to Israelis and American Jews, who then harvest their organs for sale in Israel and the United States. The organs are said to fetch anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000.

The source for the Al-Khabar report seems to be a Dr Mustafa Khayatti, head of the Algerian National Committee for the Development of Health Research. Khayatti reportedly claimed that several Jews were arrested in New York in connection with the trade. He claimed Interpol knew of the situation and was leading the investigation into the abductions. "The arrest of Jewish organ trafficking gangs does not mean that the danger has gone; top officials and specialists in this issue assert that there are other Jewish gangs who remain active in several Arab countries," Khayatti was quoted as saying.

Picking up on the Algerian report, the official Iranian news agency PressTV claimed that the Jewish group "is said to be connected to Israeli Rabbi Levi Rosenbaum, who was recently arrested in New Jersey for the direct involvement in importing human organs." The report also ran without scrutiny on certain American news outlets, including the Web site of the California-based American Arab weekly Watan. With its rapid online dissemination, the report has begun to draw fire from THOSE WORRIED ABOUT THE EASE WITH WHICH SUCH A STORY, LACKING ANY EVIDENCE, CAN SPREAD IN THE MUSLIM WORLD.

This is the news media in the era of Van Jones and President Obama. The major outlets cover what they want and create the themes they want. WHEN THEY FIND SOMETHING INCONVENIENT, THEY LET IT PASS. They didn't like the Van Jones story, so they ignored it. The network news media liked the financial entity known as Fannie Mae, so they ignored that scandalous organization for years. ACORN is getting the same treatment.

But it isn't working any more. The ACORN fiasco has now impacted three offices – Baltimore, Washington and New York – with laugh-out-loud videos reminiscent of the hookers and pimps from the 1970s "Starsky and Hutch" show. Huggy Bear returns! Four employees have been fired, with more likely to come. And the controversy was so laughably bad that the Census Bureau cut off all ties to the group known formally as the "Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now." - They called it the "tipping point" to shed themselves of ACORN. More nuts for someone else, I guess.

AND YET IT'S STILL BEEN IGNORED BY THE NETWORK NEWS. Nothing on ABC, CBS or NBC. The only thing any one of the three broadcast networks has done appeared in a blog post by ABC's Jake Tapper. It's hardly worth noting except to show that the networks know about what's going on. THEY JUST DON'T CARE TO REPORT IT. Only FOX News has bothered to report on the controversy.

Opponents had tried to delay the law, saying more debate was needed because it imposes capital punishment. Sharia law was partially introduced in Aceh in 2001, as part of a government offer to pacify separatist rebels. A peace deal in 2005 ended the 30-year insurgency, and many of the former rebels have now entered Aceh's government, which enjoys a degree of autonomy from the central government in Jakarta.

The legislation was passed unanimously by Aceh's regional legislature, said assembly member Bahrom Rasjid. "This law will be effective in 30 days with or without the approval of Aceh's governor," he said. The governor of Aceh, a former rebel with the Free Aceh Movement, is opposed to strict Sharia law. He had urged more debate over the bill.

About 90% of Indonesia's 235 million people are Muslim, practising a moderate form of the religion.

He said in such "tough times" plans to spend billions of pounds on ID cards and Trident were "wrong, wrong, wrong". He also poured scorn on Tory plans to cut spending, saying they would cause the economy to "nose dive". In his opening speech to the TUC Congress in Liverpool, Mr Barber urged caution with some economists saying there are signs of an economic recovery. He said: "The economy has fallen off a cliff. GREEN SHOOTS MEAN LITTLE WHEN THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE A DAY ARE JOINING THE DOLE QUEUE."

"Rising share prices count for little when a million and more young people can't find work. And bumper bonuses, well they're an obscene joke... It is only when unemployment comes down, only when we create decent jobs that pay decent wages and only when vital public services are safe from cuts that we will be able to talk about a real recovery." He said that, although the young are least to blame for the economic crisis, they were likely to suffer most from it.

Tony Woodley, general secretary of the Unite union, told the BBC: "We've got a situation where the spivs and speculators have made themselves fortunes and have made misery for millions of us in Britain today. It's right that victims shouldn't have to pay for the excesses of others."

OBAMA WAS REITERATING THAT ILLEGALS WOULD NOT BE COVERED IN THE PLAN and, apparently, Wilson had enough and shouted out that the statement was a lie. What did Obama say? - "There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false. The reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally." Wilson's response? "YOU LIE." Obama's reaction? "That's not true."

I have the full copy of HR3200 (America's Affordable Health Choices Act 2009) at home on my dining room table – all 1,017 pages of it. I've read it all. THERE'S NOTHING IN IT THAT SCREENS OUT NON-RESIDENTS, MUCH LESS ILLEGAL ALIENS. Indeed, two congressional committee attempts to pass legislation to specifically require proof of legality were twice voted down by Democrats. That speaks volumes; they do not want illegal aliens screened out from receiving benefits. How else do you interpret those votes?

There are verses in the Quran that say it's permissible to lie to your enemies to get what you want. PERHAPS THE PRESIDENT REMEMBERS THOSE LESSONS FROM HIS SCHOOLING IN INDONESIA DURING HIS FORMATIVE YEARS. Or perhaps he remembers the teachings of Marx and Lenin, reinforced by Saul Alinsky and supported by his Left-leaning friends from his youth who surround him today. Or perhaps he's forgotten one of the Ten Commandments.

Regardless, we can see Obama's tactics and Representative Joe Wilson called national attention to them. Apparently he's speaking words Americans want to hear. In just a few days, donations to his re-campaign reached nearly $1 million.

A Durban IT company pitted an 11-month-old bird armed with a 4GB memory stick against the ADSL service from the country's biggest web firm, Telkom. Winston the pigeon took two hours to carry the data 60 miles - in the same time the ADSL had sent 4% of the data. Telkom said it was not responsible for the firm's slow internet speeds.

The idea for the race came when a member of staff at Unlimited IT complained about the speed of data transmission on ADSL. He said it would be faster by carrier pigeon. "We renown ourselves on being innovative, so we decided to test that statement," Unlimited's Kevin Rolfe told the Beeld newspaper.

The firm said WINSTON TOOK ONE HOUR AND EIGHT MINUTES to fly between the offices, and THE DATA TOOK ANOTHER HOUR TO UPLOAD on to their system. Mr Rolfe said the ADSL transmission of the same data size was about 4% complete in the same time.

Creation, starring Paul Bettany, details Darwin's "struggle between faith and reason" as he wrote On The Origin of Species. It depicts him as a man who loses faith in God following the death of his beloved 10-year-old daughter, Annie. The film was chosen to open the Toronto Film Festival and has its British premiere on Sunday. It has been sold in almost every territory around the world, from Australia to Scandinavia. However, US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, ONLY 39 PER CENT OF AMERICANS BELIEVE IN THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION.

Movieguide.org, an influential site which reviews films from a Christian perspective, DESCRIBED DARWIN AS THE FATHER OF EUGENICS and denounced him as "a racist, a bigot and an 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder". His "half-baked theory" directly influenced Adolf Hitler and led to "atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and genetic engineering", the site stated.

The film has sparked fierce debate on US Christian websites, with a typical comment dismissing evolution as "A SILLY THEORY WITH A SERIOUS LACK OF EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT IT DESPITE OVER A CENTURY OF TRYING".

Al-Qaeda's As-Sahab media released a video featuring a still image of bin Laden and an audio statement, said IntelCenter. In the tape bin Laden reportedly said Barack Obama was "powerless" to stop the war in Afghanistan. SITE Intelligence Group, a terrorist-monitoring firm that translated the address, said bin Laden blamed the war on the "pro-Israel lobby" and corporate interests.

In the tape, bin Laden directly addressed the American public. "The time has come for you to liberate yourselves from fear and the ideological terrorism of neo-conservatives and the Israeli lobby," he said. "The reason for our dispute with you is your support for your ally Israel, occupying our land in Palestine." The purpose of the address was "to remind you of the causes" of September 11, he said.

The last audiotape by bin Laden was released June 3. In that missive he scorned US President Barack Obama's overture to the Islamic world and warned of decades of conflict ahead.

Borlaug began the work that led to his Nobel in Mexico at the end of World War II. There he developed disease-resistant varieties of wheat that produced much more grain than traditional strains. He and others later took those varieties and similarly improved strains of rice and corn to Asia, the Middle East, South America and Africa. In Pakistan and India, two of the nations that benefited most from THE NEW CROP VARIETIES, GRAIN YIELDS MORE THAN QUADRUPLED.

He was known as the father of the 'green revolution,' which transformed agriculture through high-yield crop varieties and other innovations, helping to more than double world food production between 1960 and 1990. Many experts credit the green revolution with averting global famine during the second half of the 20th century and saving perhaps one billion lives.

After a brief stint with the US Forest Service, Norman Borlaug returned to the University of Minnesota for a doctoral degree in plant pathology. He then worked as a microbiologist for DuPont, but soon left for A JOB WITH THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION. Between 1944 and 1960, Borlaug dedicated himself to increasing Mexico's wheat production. He received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor given by Congress, in 2007.

ATTEMPTS TO 'EMPOWER' CHILDREN AND A LACK OF DISCIPLINE in the classroom have also fostered rising levels of violence, at home, at school and in the street. Dr Sigman, a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, said nursery-age children are becoming increasingly violent and disrespectful towards their teachers, 'parent battering' is on the rise and the number of policemen attacked by children is soaring.

Dr Sigman said: 'Authority is a basic health requirement in children's lives. Children of the spoilt generation are used to having their demands met by their parents and others in authority, and that in turn makes them unprepared for the realities of adult life. This has consequences in every area of society, from the classroom to the workplace, the streets to the criminal courts and rehabilitation clinics. Being spoilt is now classless - from aristocracy to underclass, children are now spoilt in ways that go far beyond materialism.'

'This is partly the result of an inability to distinguish between being authoritative versus authoritarian, leaving concepts such as authority and boundaries blurred. And the consequences are measurable - BRITAIN NOW HAS THE HIGHEST RATES OF CHILD DEPRESSION, CHILD-ON-CHILD MURDER, UNDERAGE PREGNANCY, OBESITY, VIOLENT AND ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOUR AND PRE-TEEN ALCOHOLISM SINCE RECORDS BEGAN.'

For his report, The Spoilt Generation, he drew on 150 studies and reports, including official figures on crime and data on parenting strategies. Taken together, they showed many of the problems blighting 'broken Britain' are linked to lack of discipline. THIS IS BEING EXACERBATED BY MISGUIDED ATTEMPTS TO GIVE CHILDREN MORE CONTROL OVER THEIR LIVES.

"In the US and many other countries, THE TOO-BIG-TO-FAIL BANKS have become even bigger," Stiglitz said in an interview today in Paris. "THE PROBLEMS ARE WORSE THAN THEY WERE IN 2007 BEFORE THE CRISIS."

While Obama wants to name some banks as "systemically important" and subject them to stricter oversight, his plan wouldn't force them to shrink or simplify their structure. Stiglitz said THE US GOVERNMENT IS WARY OF CHALLENGING THE FINANCIAL INDUSTRY because it is politically difficult, and that he hopes the Group of 20 leaders will cajole the US into tougher action.

Speaking ahead of the TUC Congress in Liverpool, Mr Barber said the OUTLOOK WAS "VERY PRECARIOUS". But Gordon Brown says the economy is "on the road to recovery". The TUC's congress, which starts in Liverpool on Monday, will be the last one before the next general election and it comes at a time of strained relations between the unions and the government.

Unions are alarmed at suggestions that this could mean slashing some areas of spending, possibly resulting in large-scale redundancies. Mr Barber, TUC general secretary since 2003, said: "Cut the stimulus off and the economy would go into decline again. PUBLIC SPENDING CUTS WILL PROVOKE A DOUBLE-QUICK, DOUBLE-DIP RECESSION."

"Unemployment could well exceed four million and it would take many years before there was any chance of returning to anything like full employment. That would scar for life a whole generation of young people."

Known depictions of the Menorah from Second Temple times include the famous relief of Titus's Arch in Rome, which shows Roman soldiers taking it away after destroying the Temple, and depictions on contemporary coins as well as graffiti etched into stone in Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter. However, the new find is said to be the first which includes a relief etched by an artist contemporary with the Temple.

The synagogue has been dated to the years 50 BCE – 100 CE. The rectangular stone bearing the Menorah relief stands inside its central chamber. The chamber is about 120 square meters in size and stone benches line its sides. The decorated stone depicts amphorae (earthenware vessels) on both sides of the Menorah and bears additional decorative motifs on its four sides and its top.

According to Gorni (leader of the dig), the find is "unique and exciting. This is the first time that a Menorah decoration is discovered from the days in which the Temple still stood," she said. "It is the first Menorah that is discovered in a Jewish context, which is dated to Second Temple times – the early Roman period."

Here, on a sleepy stretch of shoreline at the far end of Asia, is surely THE BIGGEST AND MOST SECRETIVE GATHERING OF SHIPS IN MARITIME HISTORY. Their numbers are equivalent to the entire British and American navies combined; their tonnage is far greater. Container ships, bulk carriers, oil tankers - all should be steaming fully laden between China, Britain, Europe and the US, stocking camera shops, PC Worlds and Argos depots ahead of the retail pandemonium of 2009. But their water has been stolen.

They are a powerful and tangible representation of the hurricanes that have been wrought by the global economic crisis; an iron curtain drawn along the coastline of the southern edge of Malaysia's rural Johor state, 50 miles east of Singapore harbour. It is so far off the beaten track that nobody ever really comes close, which is why these ships are here. The world's ship owners and GOVERNMENT ECONOMISTS WOULD PREFER YOU NOT TO SEE THIS SYMBOL OF THE DEPTHS OF THE PLAGUE STILL CRIPPLING THE WORLD'S ECONOMIES.

The knock-on effect of so many ships sitting idle rather than moving consumer goods between Asia and Europe could become apparent in Britain in the months ahead. 'We will find out at Christmas whether there are enough PlayStations in the shops or not. There will certainly be fewer goods coming in to Britain during the run-up to Christmas.'